Here’s another article from our Summer 2018 Pride Guide, released in conjunction with VA Pride and available around RVA this week. Grab yourself a copy now! For details on where to find one, click here.

Comic books have always been political, a form of protest and resistance. From Superman and his roots in Jewish-American working class life to the X-Men’s clear Civil Rights subtext to the modern governmental-oversight issues made metaphor in Marvel’s Civil War storyline, comics have always been about talking back to the current climate.

VCU has recognized and tracked this tradition. Not only is the university’s archive home to one of the largest comic book collections in the country, containing over 150,000 items overall, it is also home to one of the largest LGBTQ-themed comics collections in the country. Featuring comics dating back to the 1970s, this collection is a revolutionary resource for the local LGBTQ community.

In charge of directly overseeing both the LGBTQ collection and the comic arts collection as a whole at VCU is Library Specialist for the Comic Arts Cindy Jackson. Herself a big fan of comics, she is vastly knowledgeable about the history of the medium, making her the go-to guru for comic-related nerdery on campus.

The collection itself was founded by former VCU English department chair Dr. M. Thomas Inge after a large donation was received in the 1970s. It grew very slowly over time, but eventually snowballed into the form it takes today, with even a webpage launched back in 1999. In 2005 they became a depository for the Will Eisner Awards which is ultimately what helped in explode into what it is today.

The majority of the items are donated, but a good chunk are also purchased as well, especially when pieces that Jackson considers essential to the quality of their collection are not available for donation. “When we accept manuscript collections and things to go with this collection, we look at the research value,” Jackson said. “We have a very deep, rich collection and a lot of unique items that are either not found at any other library, or not many other libraries, so it is a really great research collection.”

Although the main collection is large, where the library takes pride is in its smaller collections, such as the LGBTQ collection. “We really specialize in collecting the papers of under-documented communities,” Jackson said. “Our focus is on women activists, LGBTQ, and minority collections. All these things really go hand in hand.”

While they do not have an exact number for how many pieces are in the LGBTQ collection specifically, Jackson estimates there are around seventy graphic novels, and around one hundred comics. Much of these are of course specifically LGBTQ-centered, while some just include LGBTQ storylines. Among these are mainstream comics such as Astonishing X-Men #50, which featured the first LGBTQ wedding in comics history, as well as a variety of LGBTQ-related underground comics from the last half-century.

Because of items like these, there has been a lot of interest in recent years from students and teachers wanting to use the comics for research in their classes. This is a big change from the way things were when Jackson first came on in 1996. Back then, no one ever asked about the comics archive; now she has students and classes regularly coming to use it. “There has been an uptick in usage, which makes me happy,” Jackson said. “There are students coming in and doing research on these comics now, because they are here and they’re interested in them.”

Comics were a bit of a specialized media form in past decades. However, recent years have seen them regain some of their mainstream appeal; this development has primarily come about as the result of the graphic novel. By collecting longer stories within each single volume and binding them in a more permanent, less easily damaged form, graphic novels have brought the comic arts to a new audience. To creators looking for the perfect way to express themselves, comics offer opportunities that aren’t available in prose writing.

“While comics now are accepted as literature, there is still that stigma of the stuffy book,” Jackson explained. “You have more freedom in a comic. You’re not as tied to the words, trying to explain yourself. You can visually show what you’re trying to say, that you might not have the right words for. Or it might be an experience that’s so personal you can’t find the words for it, but you can draw an image to convey those feelings.”

By helping remove the stigma of comics being throw away trash, graphic novels have not only led comics to be taken more seriously, but also attracted creators to the medium who might never have considered making comics before. This has opened the way for various marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ community to tell their stories through comic arts.

At the same time that representation of the LGBTQ community has increased in the mainstream superhero comics world of Marvel and DC, marginalized creators working outside the mainstream have paved the way for diverse stories to be told through comics. Underground feminist comics, such as the anthology title Tits & Clits Comix, helped pave the way.

The anthology’s creators “were all women who were drawing and publishing in the male anthologies,” Jackson said. “Trina Robbins got all the women who were working and publishing in various underground comics [together], and starting publishing these comics for women, by women.”

At a time when the repressive Comics Code Authority (which forbade “sex perversion,” “depravity,” and “lust”) still dominated the content mainstream comics publishers could publish, it was up to underground comics to lead the way in representing the LGBTQ community and other marginalized populations. Feminist creators in the underground comics world helped give voice not only to their own stories, but also to those of other similarly under-represented communities.

“The underground movement really made it easier for marginalized communities to create comics,” Jackson said. “They were really friendly toward gays and lesbians, so they didn’t have an issue with putting these stories in their comics.” Eventually, underground comics with a specific LGBTQ focus began to appear, including Kitchen Sink Press’s Gay Comix, which told humorous and heartfelt stories of gay and lesbian life from the perspectives of LGBTQ creators.

However, this left the mainstream, which lagged behind in LGBTQ representation. The Comics Code Authority specifically forbade any mention of homosexuality until 1989, and even after that specific prohibition was removed, early attempts by superhero comics to depict LGBTQ characters were hit-and-miss at best.

Things didn’t change until the arrival of more complicated characters in titles published by DC’s “mature readers” imprint, Vertigo, in the early 90s. Specifically, there was the character of “occult detective” and chaos magician John Constantine of Hellblazer, who had gay associates and was, it was eventually revealed, bisexual himself. But the real game-changer for LGBTQ characters in mainstream comics was Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

“It really transcended comics. People who weren’t reading comics were reading it,” Jackson said. And when they read it, they discovered a variety of fleshed-out, multi-dimensional LGBTQ characters, including the first significant transgender comic character, Wanda, from Sandman’s fifth volume, A Game Of You.

“There is also the lesbian story in [Vol. 2], The Doll’s House, and of course [recurring character] Desire is genderfluid,” Jackson continued. “[Gaiman]’s already putting these things into comics in the 1990s and no one is batting an eye. I think that really paved the way for what we’re seeing now in comics. Neil Gaiman was just ahead of his time.”

Perhaps the most important moment in LGBTQ comics history came with the wedding of X-Men hero Northstar and his non-powered longtime partner, Kyle. Northstar had been the first openly gay superhero in comics when he came out in 1992. Twenty years later he was an agent of change once again, as his wedding was the first gay wedding to be depicted in superhero comics. VCU’s collection holds multiple copies of Astonishing X-Men #51, including variant covers.

Today, LGBTQ characters in comics are easily located, and are often depicted as positive characters. For a great example, look no further than Wallace Wells, Scott Pilgrim’s roommate in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series. While Scott’s life is a total mess throughout the series, Wallace always has his act together and helps keep Scott from going too far off the rails; his frequent, snarky words of advice for Scott are one of the series’ highlights.

There’s also Kevin Keller, who became the first gay character in the long-running line of kids’ titles from Archie Comics. Arriving in Riverdale in the pages of Veronica #202 (2010), the smooth integration of a gay character into a comic series specifically aimed at children shows how far we’ve come.

Despite an increasing profile and a wealth of resources available to VCU students and the general public, VCU’s Comics Arts Collection continues to remain somewhat of a hidden gem within the library.

Jackson hopes to increase knowledge of the collection in coming years; she’s sure the community would appreciate it if they knew it was there. “When people know about it, they come and use it,” Jackson said. And you don’t have to be working on a big research project, either. “We have students [and public patrons] who come in just to read.”

As comics continue to be one of our strongest sources of representation and liberation, they are also an immense source of support as we keep making progress and fighting back. If the Avengers can have Stark Tower, then we have Cabell Library.

The VCU LGBTQ Comic Arts Collection is located on the fourth floor of Cabell Library, and can be explored in person between and 9 AM and 5 PM weekdays. The collection is also available online in the form of a database, featuring scans of all the comics in the archive, at go.vcu.edu/comics.

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